The bandwagoning media
Pew has a report out on the media coverage of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and discovers that John McCain has received the most negative coverage of the lot. Liberal media bias? More like bandwagoning behavior, according to Pew: One question likely to be posed is whether these findings provide evidence that the news ...
Pew has a report out on the media coverage of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and discovers that John McCain has received the most negative coverage of the lot. Liberal media bias? More like bandwagoning behavior, according to Pew:
Pew has a report out on the media coverage of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and discovers that John McCain has received the most negative coverage of the lot. Liberal media bias? More like bandwagoning behavior, according to Pew:
One question likely to be posed is whether these findings provide evidence that the news media are pro-Obama. Is there some element in these numbers that reflects a rooting by journalists for Obama and against McCain, unconscious or otherwise? The data do not provide conclusive answers. They do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions. Obama’s coverage was negative in tone when he was dropping in the polls, and became positive when he began to rise, and it was just so for McCain as well. Nor are these numbers different than those we have seen before. Obama’s numbers are similar to what we saw for John Kerry four years ago as he began rising in the polls, and McCain’s numbers are almost identical to those recorded eight years ago for Democrat Al Gore.
What the findings also reveal is the reinforcing — rather than press-generated — effects of media. We see a repeating pattern here in which the press first offers a stenographic account of candidate rhetoric and behavior, while also on the watch for misstatements and gaffes. Then, in a secondary reaction, it measures the political impact of what it has reported. This is magnified in particular during presidential races by the prevalence of polling and especially daily tracking polls. While this echo effect exists in all press coverage, it is far more intense in presidential elections, with the explosion of daily tracking polls, state polls, poll aggregation websites and the 24-hour cable debate over their implications. Even coverage of the candidate’s policy positions and rhetoric, our reading of these stories suggests, took on the cast of horse race coverage.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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